Work Text:
1.
Akaashi clicks on his phone to check the time. 10:02.
The train is two minutes late. He swipes past the lock screen and opens his messages.
Akaashi: Is 12:30 still good?
Bokuto-san: YEAHHHHH
There’s a string of owl GIFs that make Akaashi’s eyes hurt.
Akaashi: Please remember to lock the door after you leave this time
Color flickers in the edge of his vision as the train pulls into the station. He pockets his phone and feels it vibrate through the cloth. Akaashi knows the latest message will read out his name in all caps and maybe a couple of frowning stickers–which Bokuto has been using excessively ever since Kuroo introduced them to him.
The top container threatens to slip off the pile as he walks down the aisle. He heaves the stack in his arms until the container slides back against his chest and finds a seat by a window.
The food he packed is simple enough. There’s grilled pork belly in the bottommost one, seasoned only lightly after the time Akaashi had asked Bokuto in second-year if he could handle spicy food and Bokuto had replied “yes i can, a-KAA-shi” and proceeded to spend the rest of the meal guzzling water while fanning his tongue. Rice is in the container on top of it, with nori sprinkled over it. And the topmost plastic container, which had nearly fallen and slipped in the train’s narrow hallways, holds pickled vegetables and tofu.
Once the containers are secured, Akaashi slips his phone back out of its pocket and clicks it on. The message is still waiting for him on the home screen and Akaashi smiles when he reads it.
Bokuto-san: AKAASHI
Akaashi steps onto the Shin-Osaka station, the sun making the skin under his sweater itch. He scans the crowd for a familiar shock of gray hair but comes up empty.
“AKAAAAAASHI!” a voice yells and then Akaashi has no time to prepare before Bokuto launches all 87 kilograms of himself at him. The containers go flying. The lids somehow stay on but the one with the rice ends up rolling underneath a nearby bench.
“Akaashi,” Bokuto says again, drinking up his name like it’s medicine. His hands are locked behind Akaashi’s back–he can feel his arms pressed up against his sweater–and he’s fairly certain that his feet are off the ground.
“Bokuto-san,” Akaashi wheezes. He thinks he hears a rib crack. “Please put me down. I can’t breathe.”
Bokuto finally lets go, dropping him on the platform. He’s wearing an MSBY Jackals t-shirt and neon blue shorts and a grin as dazzling as the sun. Akaashi squints in the sudden light, pupils dilating to accommodate a sight they haven’t seen in a long time.
“I missed you too, Akaashi!”
2.
The rain is pouring outside the windows and Akaashi stretches out his legs to let his soggy pants finally dry from inside the train. It’s one of those miserably dreary days, where the clouds are knit together in a blanket of gray over the sky and everyone is rushing to get home from work as fast as they can.
Akaashi is rushing but in the opposite direction of the property he legally owns. He has three containers again–pickled vegetables, rice, and grilled steak. The doors slide open at another station and a truckload of passengers file in, dripping water from their raincoats and shaking umbrellas.
Akaashi supposes that technically he could become one of them, another body in a crowd yearning for home. His biweekly grocery pit stops at Bokuto’s are not anything that they ever formally agreed on. Bokuto had never explicitly asked and Akaashi had never explicitly offered but they’d been texting one night and Bokuto had complained about the lack of proper food at his place and Akaashi had acted on instinct and sprung up in Osaka with a pile of tupperwares the next day. Things had only escalated from there.
The train slows to a halt as it pulls into another stop. There’s less people at this station and the rain outside sounds more like a pitter-patter than a thud-thud-thud.
A plastic bag bursting with groceries lands at his feet. Akaashi looks up to see an elderly woman in the aisle, leaning against her cane as she tries to pick it up off the ground. He stands up instantly and pulls it off the floor, extending it out to her with one hand.
Her eyes disappear somewhere in her wrinkles and her smile is toothless. The sincerity reaches him all the same.
“Thank you,” she says. Her voice is reedy, like the wind is whistling through it. “Have a safe trip home.” Akaashi doesn’t bother to correct her, watching instead as she hobbles down the length of the aisle until she finds an open seat. He’s not traveling towards home, but rather away from it.
Or maybe, just maybe, home is more than an address stamped on a government paper. Never one for idling, he banishes the thought quickly. Food is food, money is money and friends are friends–best friends, most of all. Biweekly trips to make sure his former senpai turned starting wing spiker of MSBY Jackals is not dying of hunger are exactly that.
The train whirs back to life and the blinking sign on the wall tells him his destination is in three stops. The space by his feet where the bag landed is still wet. He rests his chin on the top of his tupperware pile and looks again into the crowd of people with dripping umbrellas and soggy briefcases on the train.
Akaashi wonders what it would take to become one of them, able to endure a dreary train ride because they know their destination is home.
When he gets to the Tokyo station, there’s only a few people on the landing. He finds Bokuto easily–he’s the only one with no umbrella, his hood instead pulled tight over his head and thoroughly soaked through.
“Bokuto-san,” Akaashi says, rushing over immediately. The containers, slick with rain, threaten to slip out of his grasp but he hugs them tighter and runs faster. He brought his largest umbrella for this purpose but looking at him now, he’s not sure they’ll both fit.
They make it work. Bokuto has to squeeze in so tight their arms are pressed together but they just barely fit under the overhang of the umbrella. Akaashi manages a small smile of relief.
Bokuto sneezes in response, wipes his nose with the back of his sleeve and then uses that same arm to grab Akaashi in a hug.
“I missed you, Akaashi!”
3.
It’s winter and Akaashi sneezes once, the cold biting at his nose before he buries it deeper into his scarf. The train is late again, he has two bags laden with gifts and his phone is going off like crazy.
He puts the one with the food on the ground and digs through his coat to fish out his phone. Bokuto’s pixelated face stares at him from under a sea of text messages.
Bokuto-san: AKAAAAASHI
Bokuto-san: LOOK WHAT I GOT
Bokuto-san: you cant see inside because its a surrpise
Bokuto-san: but i promise it will be the AWESOMEST CHRISTMAS GIFT EVER
There’s a selfie attached next and when Akaashi clicks it, he’s greeted with a picture of Bokuto holding a very large shopping bag outside a store. He’s wearing a jacket (thankfully), but he’s missing his mittens and the hat that Akaashi gifted him two Christmases ago.
The train is here. Akaashi finds a seat and pushes the bags against his chair in order to thumb out his response.
Akaashi: Please dress warmly. The weather is cold
Bokuto-san: AKAASHI
He can see his frown, hair drooping down with his mouth, from 200 miles away.
Akaashi: Thank you for the present
Bokuto-san: YOU CANT SAY THAT WHEN YOU HAVENT OPENED IT YET
Bokuto-san: tell the train to come faster!!!
Akaashi: That’s not possible
Bokuto-san: ITS CHRISTMAS
Bokuto-san: anything is possible!!!!!
Akaashi frowns. He can think of many things that aren’t possible, even though it’s the most celebrated day of the year–such as Udai-sensei finishing a chapter in time, Bokuto dressing appropriately for the weather or Akaashi finding the words that have eluded him for years.
Bokuto-san: JUST BELIEVE AKAASHIII
There’s an owl GIF in his messages now–with a corny catchphrase in Comic Sans going along the bottom and disco lights in the background. Akaashi grins against his will.
Akaashi: Okay
“See, it is a Christmas miracle!” Bokuto shouts when the train arrives two minutes early. Akaashi smiles because Bokuto’s joy is contagious.
“I suppose so, Bokuto-san,” he says and then hands him the bag with his present. There’s new kneepads and a signed copy of Udai-sensei’s latest manga in there but Bokuto won’t know that until he opens it later in his apartment.
Bokuto looks down at the gift with mixed wonder and awe, like he’s surprised that Akaashi got him a present when he does it every year.
“For me?” he yells. Akaashi’s eardrum pops as he nods. Bokuto looks like a kid on Christmas morning as he eagerly takes the bag. Actually … Akaashi checks the time on his phone. He is a kid on Christmas morning.
“This one’s for you, Akaashi!” Bokuto says, pushing a hastily wrapped present into his hands. It’s far bigger than anything Akaashi could ever use or need but he takes it all the same.
“Thank you,” he murmurs into the wrapping. Bokuto smiles. The lights of the station twinkle behind him.
“I missed you, Akaashi!”
+1.
Akaashi wakes up with a pounding headache and a sore throat. It’s been exactly two weeks since he last went to Osaka so that means he’s due for another grocery visit. In fact, the food he’d packed last night is still waiting for him in the fridge.
He kicks off the covers and tries to stagger over to the kitchen. He doesn’t make it even halfway there, landing in the bathroom instead and hurling his guts into a toilet.
Akaashi rests his face against his forearms as the sound of the toilet flushing echoes in his ears. He’s not going to make it to Osaka at this rate. He’s not going to make it out of his house at this rate. He’s running on maybe 20% functionality.
Akaashi washes his hands in the sink and splashes water on his face. He fills a glass in the kitchen and grabs a bottle of ibuprofen off his counter. When he makes it back to his bedroom, he swallows two of the pills and leaves the rest on his night stand.
Akaashi buries back into his covers, pulling the blanket high over his head. His phone buzzes from somewhere outside his sheets but it feels like a million miles away.
He should really text Bokuto. He doesn’t want him to spend an hour waiting at an empty train station, although the weather isn’t too bad today so Akaashi doesn’t have to worry about him forgetting his mittens again.
But then again, their meetings are never something they formally agreed on. Maybe Bokuto will forget that Akaashi’s supposed to even come at all today and it’ll work out for both of them. Or maybe Bokuto will stand at the station for a bit but come to the inevitable conclusion that Akaashi’s not coming after he doesn’t appear for a while and go home, dejected, but recover after a few good spikes. Or maybe Bokuto secretly dislikes Akaashi’s nagging presence in his life and will be grateful for a few moments outside of his overbearing control.
Akaashi feels like he’s swimming in a sea of maybe’s and one particularly brutal thought threatens to crash over him like a wave. Maybe Bokuto just doesn’t miss Akaashi in the way Akaashi misses Bokuto.
The phone buzzes again and his head feels like someone is trying to pry it open with a pickaxe. Akaashi lets it go unanswered and falls into the ocean of unconsciousness.
Akaashi only wakes up because someone is knocking on his door. A loud THUD! THUD! THUD! comes from the landing and Akaashi mentally corrects his earlier thought. Someone is loudly pounding on his door like they’re desperate to break through.
Maybe it’s Udai-sensei with a new chapter he’s eager to review. Maybe it’s a robber trying to break in, although they’re only going to find undercooked meat and too many bags of coffee grounds. Akaashi pulls the pillow over his ears and rolls over. Either one can wait.
One minute of silence passes and Akaashi’s on the brink of sleep. Just a couple more moments and then–
THUD! THUD! THUD! Akashi grits his teeth and shoves his face deeper into the pillow. Another series of pounds comes after a few more moments. There’s no way he’s going back to sleep after this.
He kicks his tangled-up covers to the foot of his bed and manages to find a pair of slippers to jam his feet into. Akaashi briefly contemplates picking up the umbrella in the hallway in case it really is an intruder, before deciding that no robber would be this persistent and yanks the door open empty-handed.
Bokuto is standing on the other side, wearing a t-shirt that doesn’t match his shorts.
“You’re not dead!” he yells and tackles Akaashi in some sort of bear-hug. They both land on the ground and if Akaashi’s head didn’t hurt before, it does now after it’s been body-slammed into the floor.
“Bokuto-san,” Akaashi croaks. His voice is shot and he feels like his illness is seeping into Bokuto’s immune system with every second of prolonged skin contact. “You have a game tomorrow.”
“So?” Bokuto asks, like he’s no clue how that’s relevant.
“You have a game tomorrow. You need to be back by-” Akaashi breaks into a coughing fit and Bokuto rears his head back instantly, eyes wide.
“Akaashi, you’re sick?” he yelps, much too close to Akaashi’s ear. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“Bokuto-san,” he says in between coughs. “It’s really not that big of a deal.”
“Well,” Bokuto replies with a frown that spells his disbelief. He’s rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet and Akaashi’s front door is still wide open. “I brought food.” He holds up a paper bag that has grease pooling at the bottom and dripping onto Akaashi’s floor.
“You brought food,” he echoes and then takes a moment to rub his forehead in order to grasp the abnormality of the situation. “I didn’t show up at the station today so you hopped on a train from Osaka to Tokyo when you have a game the next day because you thought I was dead.” It sounds even more ridiculous out loud and yet–Akaashi glances at the idiot sitting on his doorstep.
“Yeah!” Bokuto shouts. He tips his head to one side. “I missed you, Akaashi!”
The sea of maybe’s dries up in an instant. There’s no room left for misinterpretation. Akaashi would take a two-and-a-half-hour train ride in an instant for Bokuto and as it turns out, Bokuto would do the same for him too.
Akaashi’s throat hurts like hell. The door is still open. Bokuto’s mystery “food” bag is still dripping grease all over the floor. None of it matters. Akaashi lets himself fall into Bokuto’s open embrace and pretends the flush is from the fever.
“I missed you too.”